I am Ready to Join the Emerging Trend of Women Vacationing Without Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Solo

A few weeks ago, I got an email about a press trip I would never consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Although I liked those activities, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to wonder what that would really be like: being somewhere new, without anyone to accommodate except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be amazing. So I said “yes” and it turned out they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel demographic: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people going alone, and 70% of those are women. They have families, they have hectic social lives, they have spouses, their world is absolutely full with people they could go on holiday with – and that’s why they (we) need a holiday on their own.

The more daring the travel, the more people are doing it alone. People are big into trekking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that couples are unlikely to be aligned on in their interest. If anyone is also sick of dragging teenagers to the wonders of the world, just to watch them be on their phones and field questions such as “how much longer do we have to be here?”, they are too tactful to mention it.

The real puzzle is why it’s taken so long to get here. My stepmother, who is completely modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a Belgian restaurant on her own, and even though I mock her for this constantly, I must have had a vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.